Private Passions - Archbishop Bernard Longley

On this Easter Sunday edition of Private Passions, Michael Berkeley meets the newly-appointed Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham, Bernard Longley. He studied singing at the Royal Northern College of Music and at New College Oxford, and music has always been a great passion in his life. His choices include the famous Notturno movement from Borodin's Second String Quartet - a piece associated with the musical 'Kismet' which his mother particularly loved, - and the epilogue of Arnold Bax''s Third Symphony, a work which deserves to be heard more often. There's also the harrowing ending of Poulenc's opera 'Dialogues des Carmelites' - which Bernard Longley greatly admires as bearing witness to the courage and sacrifice of the Carmelite nuns during the French Revolution - as well as sacred choral music by Verdi - the Rex tremendae from the Requiem; Messiaen - his exquisite motet 'O sacrum convivium', which Bernard Longley sang when he was a member of the choir at New College, Oxford; Vaughan Williams - the Kyrie from the Mass in G minor, sung by the choir of Westminster Cathedral where Bernard Longley worked before his appointment to Birmingham; and Elgar - an extract from 'The Dream of Gerontius', first performed in Birmingham's Town Hall, and forever linked with the words of Cardinal Newman, a crucial figure in the life of the Birmingham Roman Catholic diocese.